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Impediments to Implementing
Curricular Change: Training
and Support of Teachers
PRESERVICE EDUCATION: TEACHING THE TEACHERS
The present process of learning to teach is long and continuous. It
begins well before a prospective teacher enters a formal program, during 12-
14 years of "apprenticeship of observations"; by watching teachers go about
their work, students garner many ideas about teaching and learning (NCRTE,
1988~. Formally, it starts with admission into a program for educating teachers
(preservice education), usually in the sophomore or junior year of undergraduate
education. It continues with induction into the profession (practice teaching or
interning) during the senior year or in a postbaccalaureate year and inservice
education throughout one's teaching career. When the student completes the
preservice program, state policies determine what subjects one may teach at
what level and for how long.
Preservice Education of High-School Biology Teachers
The undergraduate biology and related science education of prospective
American teachers varies greatly, depending on the type of institution they
attend. Traditional programs for educating biology teachers at universities that
have schools or colleges of education include a biology major and pedagogical
and professional courses that can be completed in 4 years. A successful
graduate receives a bachelor's degree and qualifies to apply for a teaching
license. More recently, some research universities have moved to programs that
couple a standard biology major with a fifth (and sometimes a sixth) year of
pedagogical, professional, and practical experience. Most programs requiring
~ years result In note bachelor s and master s Degrees, as well as teaching
- ' - _ 7 r -- r - - r ~ __
53
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54
FULFILLING THE PROMISE
licenses; 5-year programs lead to a bachelor's degree and a teaching license.
New York and California have required 5-year programs for more than 50 years.
Generally, undergraduate courses taken by preservice biology teachers are
the same as those taken by students preparing for professional or graduate
schools. Two professional associations, the National Association of Biology
Teachers (NABT) and the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), have
recommended numbers and types of courses for programs instructing future
biology teachers (Appendixes B and C).
Our committee is concerned about both the scope and the format of sci-
ence courses currently available to prospective teachers. In most colleges, large,
impersonal lecture courses and structured laboratory activities in science depart-
ments make up the format, and prospective teachers have few opportunities to
participate in long-range laboratory inquiries, to lead fruitful discussions, or to
ask and respond to penetrating questions. The infrequent use of creative inquiry
or of strategies for cooperative learning in high-school biology classrooms) is
probably related to their absence in most college programs. A recent asse~s-
ment of mathematics education (NRC, 1989a) came to the same condom
in suggesting that a major problem in elementary-school and secondary-school
mathematics instruction is that most teachers have studied only in an authori-
tarian framework.
The component of preservice course work that deals with teaching methods
involves general instruction in the sociology of schools and the psychology of
learning and usually a one-semester course in methods of teaching science.
The fundamental difficulty with the courses in pedagogy is that they are
unrelated to the specifics of teaching the concepts of biology. Skillful and
experienced teachers have discovered, through practice, effective techniques
for teaching specific scientific concepts, but little of this useful information is
incorporated into the preservice education of teachers. Recently, the curriculum
has been augmented with courses on, for example, early field (classroom)
experiences, multicultural education, and science, technology, and society (STS).
But few institutions include courses on research about learning, on building and
practicing techniques of communicating science to students at different ages
(content pedagogy), or on inducting new teachers into the schools. The courses
dealing with both content and pedagogy need to be changed; however, the most
pressing need is to integrate these two components of preservice education.
Preservice Education of Elementary-School, Middle-School, and
Junior-High-School Teachers
Programs to educate prospective elementary-school and middle- or junior-
higb,-school teachers to teach science are even more diverse and inadequate.
Historically, preservice education for elementary-school teachers (grades K-5
or K-6) has prepared generalists who have extensive training in pedagogy.
Most prospective elementary-school teachers major in elementary education in
colleges of education, and their undergraduate programs generally consist of
one-third general-education courses (such as English, speech, and psychology),
one-third content courses (such as language arts, children's literature, biology,
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TRAINING AND SUPPORT OF TEACHERS
55
physical sciences, and mathematics), and one-third pedagogical courses (excep-
tional children, methods of teaching in each subject, classroom management,
and so forth). Depending on the institution, elementary-education majors take
regular courses in a subject (e.g., introduction to biology) or courses especially
designed for them (for example, biology for elementary-education majors).
One feature consistently characterizes those programs: prospective elemen-
tary-school teachers study very little science. As a group, they are therefore
poorly prepared to teach science, and most of them devote little time to science
instruction in their classrooms. Weiss (1987) reports that in 1985-1986 the
average time per day spent in teaching science in elementary school is 18
minutes for grades K-3 and 29 minutes for grades 4-6.
Preparation of prospective teachers in middle or junior high schools is not
based on a coherent philosophy. In some states, teachers for middle and high
schools come through the same kind of preservice programs. In states that
have special requirements for licensing for grades 6-9, however, institutions
have developed preservice programs for middle- or junior-high-school teachers.
Usually, such programs are in colleges of education; that is, students major
in education, but have a minor in science. One common weakness is that
many students take survey courses in several sciences and do not gain in-depth
preparation in any one science.
The Process of Induction in the Education of Precollege Teachers
The final preparation for teaching in all grades is student teaching, which
is usually a full-time experience for less than a semester. Recently, longer
(and partially paid) internships have become more popular in graduate schools
of education, which collaborate with what are called professional-development
schools. Such schools might be jointly operated by school districts and univer-
sities, with the aim of providing a more structured and supportive introduction
to teaching than is usually available.
Internships can replace student teaching (usually in 5-year programs) or be
used in a special first-year position in which beginning biology teachers are under
the supervision of an experienced mentor. In other cases, internships are part of a
program in which a university warranties the quality of its education graduates
by agreeing to assist first-year teachers (often called interns) in overcoming
deficiencies. Such warranty programs are available in a variety of institutions,
such as research universities, state universities and teacher education institutions,
several small colleges, and some institutions predominantly for blacks.
Currents of Reform and Their Possible Impact
Several reports have recently refocused national attention on the education
of teachers. The Holmes Group (1986), a consortium of more than 120 uni-
versities with a commitment to research, has developed an agenda for training
teachers that is radically different from most existing programs. It proposes to
abolish the undergraduate education major; to develop a differentiated teaching
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FULFILLING THE PROMISE
force, distinguished by specific disciplinary teaching licenses; and to establish
programs for professional development and practical training in which prospec-
tive teachers would enroll for a fifth year after receiving their bachelor's degree
in a 4-year liberal-arts curriculum.
The Carnegie Task Force on Teaching as a Profession (1986)-a group of
industry, government, and education leaders has specified similar changes for
programs that educate teachers. In addition, it has supported the establishment
of a National Board for Professional Teaching Standards that would restructure
the teaching force into four levels. The task force further recommends the
development of clinical schools for the practical component of teachers' training.
The Holmes and Carnegie groups differ on some issues, such as the urgency
of recruiting minority-group members into teaching and the importance of
assessing students' learning and teachers' accountability. Together, however,
they provide both a focus and an agenda for reform.
The education of teachers in the United States appears to be entering
another period of substantial change. Although it holds promise of improving
the programs in which teachers are trained, effective reform will have to
occur within the broad spectrum of institutions that educate teachers. Perhaps
because of their exclusion or lack of involvement, an association of institutions
traditionally devoted to the education of teachers has questioned the recent
suggestions for reform. The Teacher Education Council of State Colleges and
Universities (TECSCU), a group of institutions that has a long tradition of
preparing teachers for elementary and secondary schools, supports retaining the
education major and the standard 4-year program, requiring the same standards
for certifying all teachers, eliminating the establishment of national standards
of competence, and strengthening the role of the school principal.
Much of the current reform movement focuses on the comparative efficacy
of degrees in education and degrees in the arts and sciences, but little empirical
research informs the debate. What teachers actually learn from science or
education courses and how that learning is related to their effectiveness in the
classroom are not well understood (Guyton and Farokhi, 1987; NCRTE, 1988~.
One of the current problems is the inability to sort out the effects of informal
observations, practical experiences, and formal courses on what a teacher learns
and how a teacher teaches. Several current studies might help to clarify the
matter (Hummer and Strom, 1987; NCRTE, 1988~.
Most programs, in both science departments and schools of education, lack
a continuous series of experiences that allow prospective teachers to develop
skills in using analogies and examples to illustrate and clarify the science to be
taught. The Holmes Group initiatives do not explicitly address the development
of pedagogical knowledge that is specific to a subject; rather, they assume
that knowledge of content (e.g., gained through a biology major) is adequate.
An add-on fifth year might separate pedagogical courses further from content
courses and will not provide continuous structured opportunities to integrate
pedagogy and content. The issue is critical, because the pedagogical techniques
for teaching specific science content as a process of inquiry are largely missing
from all present college and university curricula.
In the preparation of elementary-school teachers, two routes have been
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TRAINING AND SUPPORT OF TEACHERS
57
taken by institutions adhering to the Holmes Group recommendation: some have
developed special interdisciplinary majors (e.g., science-mathematics, language
arts, life studies), and others have steered prospective elementary-school teachers
into traditional majors. With the elimination of the elementary-education major,
one concern is that few prospective elementary-school teachers will choose the
science-mathematics interdisciplinary major or a traditional major in one of
the natural sciences. The science requirements in many humanities, arts, and
social-science majors are even lower than those in current elementary education
majors, so the next generation of elementary-school teachers might have less
experience with science than do the current teachers.
As part of a Carnegie study of adolescent development, a task force has
advocated special preservice programs for prospective middle-school teachers
that provide a firm foundation in science (including depth in one field), courses
on early adolescence, and pedagogy integrated with practice (Carnegie Council
on Adolescent Development, 1989~. In one suggested approach, prospective
middle-school teachers would enroll in traditional academic majors, which
would be augmented by opportunities to observe and work with early adolescents
as early as the freshman year. The task force recommends an undergraduate
education with a concentration on two academic subjects followed by a period of
internship or apprenticeship in a middle school (Carnegie Council on Adolescent
Development, 1989~.
The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, initiated by the
Carnegie Task Force on Teaching as a Profession (1986), has made recommen-
dations for preservice education of teachers and stresses the need to integrate
subject and pedagogy throughout the preservice program.
Conclusions
The preparation of future teachers is in need of drastic reform. Existing
standards for both content and pedagogy are inadequate to meet current societal
expectations. The problem will be exacerbated in the next decade, unless much
stronger teacher preparation is initiated. Effective biology teaching requires
being able to deco, as well as to know, and new programs must ensure that new
teachers not only understand biology, but have the skills to relate scientific
concepts to children of different ages.
Recommendations
Our recommendations for preservice education and the induction of teachers
focus on the nature of courses and programs in the undergraduate major, the need
for appropriate research on teaching, and the type of institution for educating
future biology teachers.
A high-school curriculum that treats science as a process for know-
ing about the world can be successful only if the teachers have a deep
understanding of that process themselves. We therefore [eel that every
teacher who has responsibility for a high-school science class should have
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FULFILLING THE PROMISE
had the experience of engaging in original research earlier under the direc-
tion of a research scientist. Ideally, that should happen as part of preservice
education, even if for only a semester or a summer. For active teachers
who have missed the opportunity, inservice mechanisms must be devised,
as recommended below.
· Prospective teachers of high-school biology should be prepared
in cell and developmental biology, ecology, evolutionary biology, genetics,
and molecular biology and biochemistry. Those fields should guide their
selection of courses, which should be underpinned by a basic exposure
to mathematics and the physical sciences. We encourage experiences that
explore new ways to break down traditional barriers between the natural
sciences and between the natural and social sciences. Wherever possible,
the curriculum should include at least one course in which science is related
to issues of public concern.
· The most important change in the undergraduate curriculum will
require the participation of university science and education faculty in
creating environments for learning that are less authoritarian and that
engage future teachers in discussion of concepts, the relations between
scientific disciplines, and cooperative analysis of information. New, more
effective processes should be developed for integrating pedagogical and
scientific subject matter. In schools that train many teachers, special
sections could be created in which the students have an opportunity to
discuss how their experiences at the college level could be best modified to
present important concepts and principles to younger students.
· Faculties of schools of education and science departments should
collaborate to develop science-methods courses. The goal of such courses
would be to combine appropriate teaching pedagogy with scientific methods;
they would be taught by biologists or biology-education specialists.
· Undergraduate programs are needed that will better prepare teach-
ers to deal with science in elementary and middle schools. Such programs
could have an integrated science or science-mathematics major. The ped-
agogical character of the programs will differ from that appropriate for
high-school teachers, but there are few if any usable models.
· Other issues that need attention include instruction in the strengths
and weaknesses of different procedures for testing at different age levels
and evaluation and selection of appropriate curricular materials, especially
textbooks.
· There is a dearth of research on what makes teacher-education pro-
grams effective. Among the questions that need to be asked and analyzed
are the following:
What is the relative efficacy of 4- and 5-year programs?
What scientific skills, strategies, and knowledge are most needed by
biology teachers?
What facilitates the acquisition and use of those skills and knowledge
by novice teachers?
-What type of induction period maximizes teachers' effectiveness and
students' learning?
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TRAINING AND SUPPORT OF TEACHERS
59
· Some institutions now training biology teachers should not train
them. For example, some fundamentalist colleges and universities do not
teach evolution. A national group should consider the material that must
be offered to provide adequate preservice education in the sciences.
· Current movements for reform of the teaching profession argue
that adequate preservice education requires more than 4 years and a bach-
elor's degree. We support that view, but feel that several patterns in 5-year
programs might be valid. For example, a student who receives a bachelor
of arts or science in biology as part of a liberal-arts curriculum could
spend a fifth year largely under the wing of a senior mentor, obtaining
experience in the classroom, rather than in a full program of more courses.
Regardless of the details of the preservice experience, however, teachers'
education should include both attention to "content-pedagogy" and care-
fully designed inservice programs. Particularly during the first several
years of teaching, the focus of inservice programs should be on techniques
_. _
, . . . . . .
for teaching science. In later years, they should provide mechanisms for
updating teachers' knowledge of science.
· The plans of the reform movement to lengthen preservice education
from 4 to 5 years are likely to make it more difficult to attract talented
neonIe from impoverished backgrounds and have a disproportionate impact
~ ~ ~ C7 ~ ~ ~
. .. . . .. . . ... .. ~
on minority groups. As part of recruitment, institutions must find ways
to allow prospective teachers to fulfill undergraduate biology majors and
teacher licensing requirements without additional expense.
LICENSING AND CERTIFICATION OF TEACHERS
Until recently, the terms "license" and "certification" were used inter-
changeably to indicate the legal approval by a state to teach, but today there is a
distinction between the two terms and the two processes. States grant licenses;
professional groups confer certification. Governor Thomas Kean of New Jersey
articulated the difference (National Governors' Association for Policy Research,
1988, p. ii):
Board certification will be different from state licensing. State licensure will
continue as a prerequisite for teaching, while professional board certification
will offer an option to teachers who would like to be recognized for what
they know and can do as first class practitioners. Both will exist in parallel
as they do in most other professions.
L· ~
Icenslug
When students complete approved course work and practical experience,
they receive short-term (3- to 5-year) state licenses. Licenses are for specific
subjects and teaching levels. Traditionally, states approve college programs
and graduates receive licenses automatically. State requirements include type
and number of hours in specific disciplinary and professional courses, as well
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FULFILLING THE PROMISE
as general competence. In the case of biology, most practicing teachers are
licensed. A survey of 23 states indicated that only 9% of newly hired teachers
and 6% of practicing biology teachers did not hold licenses to teach biology
as a major or minor field (Champagne and Baden, 1988~. However, there are
shortages of teachers in the physical sciences, and chemistry and especially
physics are often taught by persons without appropriate licenses. That situation
is particularly common in rural schools, where only one or two classes of
chemistry or physics are offered each year. In some states, superintendents can
ask for emergency licenses that allow teachers to teach out of their own fields.
Subject specialty is often ignored in the assignment of teachers to science
classes in middle and junior high schools. Many teachers with specialties in
agriculture, home economics, or general science teach whatever middle- or
junior-high-school science is offered. A license to teach general science does
not mean that its holder has adequate training in biology, chemistry, physics,
and earth science; many persons with this category of license have only a
general educational background in science. Teaching licenses granted in one
state usually are recognized in another. Most colleges and universities seek
approval of their programs for educating teachers by the National Council for
Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE). NCATE's imprimatur is impor-
tant, because graduation from an NCATE-approved program assures prospective
teachers that their licenses will be honored in most states. NCATE standards
have emphasized pedagogy, often to the neglect of content. Moreover, many
preservice programs in research universities have not met NCATE standards for
the number and variety of field experiences or number and kinds of education
courses.
Recently, two professional associations of teachers, the National Associ-
ation of Biology Teachers (NABT, 1985) and the National Science Teachers
Association (NSTA, 1984), have recommended appropriate courses and teach-
ing competences that have ramifications for both licensing and certification
(Appendixes B and C). NABT recommends criteria for minimal content and
competence in an undergraduate program leading to a biology-teaching license;
NSTA has developed mechanisms to review preparatory programs, to evaluate
inservice education, and to bestow approval on teachers. The recent adoption
of NSTA standards by NCATE makes those standards potentially important.
Weiss's (1987) survey results indicate that 80% of responding high-school
biology teachers meet the general 32-hour biology requirements suggested by
NSTA, but only 29% of all biology teachers satisfy all the NSTA requirements;
the rest generally lack one or more specific courses.
Until recently, graduation from an approved program has been sufficient
for a teaching license. During the last 5 years, however, national examinations
have been added. In general, they attempt to assess both basic skills and
professional knowledge. Today, 42 states use tests to screen beginning teachers,
and the remaining eight plan to implement them soon. Of the 42, 22 require
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TRAINING AND SUPPORT OF TEACHERS
61
the National Teacher Examination, offered by the Educational Testing Service
(Champagne and Baden, 1988~.
The increase in the use of tests to measure the competence of teachers is
part of the current reform movement. Tests (or grade-point average~PA in
courses) may be used on entrance into preservice programs or later, as part of
the licensing process. Reliance on those criteria, however, raises a number of
issues that have not been well explored. Guyton and Farokhi (1987) studied
whether basic skills and academic performance were related to subject knowl-
edge and teaching performance in the classroom. According to the authors,
the study failed to support three current trends that have led to the adoption
of examinations for teachers: testing of basic skills before entry into teacher
education does not screen out persons who will become less-able teachers;
the GPA is not a predictor of a teacher's performance, so raising the GPA as
a requirement for entrance into teacher-education programs is of questionable
value; and it cannot be assumed that one can equate subject knowledge with
ability to teach. Analysis points up the need to relate pedagogy more effectively
to subject matter in the training of teachers and the need to examine critically
new procedures that purport to assess teachers with examinations. However,
the GPA is not irrelevant as a measure of academic performance and we should
try to attract talented individuals to the profession of teaching.
The State of Georgia has sponsored studies to assess teachers. Using lesson
plans submitted by the teachers and observation of classrooms, the state has
invested over $2 million in developing a system for evaluating the performance
of new teachers (Bethel, 1984~. Other states are following Georgia's example.
Teaching licenses in many states are tied to passing the assessment process, but
critical evaluation of the process itself is still lacking.
Perhaps because teacher licensing is cumbersome and burdened with spe-
cific regulations, reformers have sought to implement and test alternative routes
to licenses. In 1987, 24 states had alternative licensing programs designed,
at least in part, to increase the numbers of science and mathematics teachers
by decreasing the number of disincentives to entering the teaching profession
(Blank, 1988; see Appendix D). Those programs allow college graduates to
become teachers without matriculating in a formal preservice program.
One of the most publicized new routes has been the Provisional Teacher
Program approved by the New Jersey State Board of Education, under which
anyone who has a baccalaureate degree, passes an examination in a particular
subject, and completes a 1-year intern program may be licensed to teach
(Cooperman and Klagholz, 19851. Furthermore, the program permits a school
district to select a well-qualified, nonlicensed provisional teacher over a less-
qualified, licensed teacher. Since it began in 1985, more than 1,500 new
provisional teachers have entered New Jersey classrooms through the Provisional
Teacher Program. Nearly 30% of the state's new public-school teachers in 1988
and 24% in 1989 were hired under the program (New Jersey State Department
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FULFILLING THE PROMISE
of Education, 19891. State officials claim that the caliber of new recruits is on
the whole higher than that of the state's licensed teachers (New York Times,
September 13, 1989~. New Jersey's experiment needs to be followed closely.
One potential problem is that teachers unions view alternative paths to licensing
with suspicion, seeing them as mechanisms to keep teachers' salaries low in
periods or areas of high demand and low supply.
Certification
Professional certification of teachers is one of the cornerstones of the cur-
rent reform movement. The first professional organization to grant certification
was NSTA. Both the Holmes Group (1986) and the projects initiated by the
Carnegie Corporation of New York (1986) advocate professional certification of
well-prepared teachers. The Holmes Group envisions differential certification
of graduates of 5-year programs of teacher education. The Teacher Assessment
Project, funded by Carnegie at Stanford University, has been developing stan-
dards that could be used to confer professional certification. Various interrelated
programs in the Connecticut Continuum project also have potential as a means
to this end. The National Governors' Association and the research and devel-
opment projects funded by Carnegie have supported the recent establishment of
a National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) that eventually
plans to certify teachers who have fulfilled special preservice and induction
requirements. Practical skills, pedagogical skills, and pedagogical knowledge
of the subject would be assessed, in addition to subject knowledge. One basis
of the project is to engage teachers in the setting and meeting of standards for
membership in the teaching force. The NBPTS therefore has drawn two-thirds
of its members from the teaching profession and one-third from the public and
from universities. The NBPTS expects to begin certifying teachers in 1993
and hopes eventually to certify every qualified teacher in the nation. Both the
suggested requirements and the process of certification make the implications
of this program profound, but acceptance and support by teachers are as yet
unknown.
If adopted by states and teachers unions, certification will force the fol-
lowing changes in the education of biology teachers:
· Induction into teaching that starts during preservice and extends over
several years.
.
Opportunities for developing skills in teaching science combined with
opportunities for reflection on teaching effectiveness.
· Teaching as a shared practice.
· National examinations in subject matter, which will influence courses
in preserves programs.
· Inservice programs in which practicing teachers and principals will
serve as mentors.
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63
· Cooperation of colleges and universities, schools, and unions in helping
candidates to meet requirements for certification.
Conclusions
In efforts to improve the performance of our nation's schools, attempts are
being made to strengthen the licensing process and to create an alternative in the
form of professional certification. Changes in licensing requirements have so
far focused on examinations of debatable relevance and on alternative licensing
schemes that hold considerable promise, but are also subject to administrative
misuse. Plans for certification have the potential for creating generally accepted
national standards.
Recommendations
· State licensing regulations should be altered so as to facilitate, not
impede, improvement of preservice education.
· The various alternative ways to obtain teaching licenses (late entry,
long internship, etc.) should be critically evaluated. Existing models,
such as New Jersey's Provisional Teacher Program, need to be compared,
particularly with respect to the teaching of science.
· Questionable routes to licensing, such as emergency certification
and seniority rules that cut across disciplines, should be eliminated. The
practice of assigning unqualified persons to teach science simply because
they have seniority in the school system is without educational justification
and must cease.
· We support a thorough review of the National Teacher Examination
to ensure that it is related to teaching performance, not simply to basic
content knowledge and exposure to required courses.
· Major changes in certification along the lines of Stanford's Teacher
Assessment Project or the Connecticut Continuum project are occurring.
An independent national committee composed of biologists, teachers, biol-
ogy educators, and state school personnel-should evaluate those plans and
others with particular emphasis on their adequacy for assessing competence
to teach science as a process of inquiry and discovery.
· Standards for certification of science specialists in elementary
schools and of life-science teachers in middle and junior high schools need
to be developed. Ideally, however, the task should be addressed as part of
a larger effort to define the flow of scientific education from kindergarten
through high school.
· Efforts should be made to clarify the role of mentor teachers
that are to be required for national board certification. Mentoring is
not a common working concept for today's teachers, who perform their
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FULFILLING THE PROMISE
duties in isolation from one another and with great autonomy. Few could
define a mentor or describe what one does. Mentor relationships between
experienced and novice teachers, however, are a cornerstone of the reform
movement. The subject of mentoring is discussed at length in the following
section.
INSERVICE EDUCATION: HOW TEACHERS CONTINUE TO LEARN
Background
"Inservice education" refers to the formal, usually structured activities of
practicing teachers intended to improve their knowledge or skills. It is a form
of continuing education. Local districts have a major influence on inservice
education, in that they can specify the kinds of academic credits or other
activities that will advance a teacher on the salary scale. States, too, can require
kinds and numbers of inservice activities for renewal of teaching licenses. More
recently, professional teachers' groups have identified inservice education as a
sphere they want to influence. Teacher associations, unions, and interested
commissions and foundations have begun to recommend standards for inservice
education (Green, 19871.
The nature of inservice activities is changing. About half the states
require a master's degree for a professional license, which allows a teacher to
teach virtually permanently. Today, 63% of all grade 10-12 science teachers
already have master's degrees, so fewer teachers are returning to universities for
further education. But to advance on the salary scale, teachers need continuing
education. Recently, teachers unions have argued that teachers, rather than
institutions of higher education, should provide, or at least select, the additional
experiences or course work needed for professional renewal. Perhaps as a result,
there has been a proliferation of short, topical workshops, usually offered by
private educational consulting firms, at which teachers earn credit renewal units
(CRUs) or continuing education units (CEUs). Educational consulting agencies
charge for their work and are competitive; that can lead to reductions in time
requirements and rigor to secure a contract. Such inservice activity is contracted
by school districts, many of which have an administrator designated to select
and organize inservice programs, or by local teachers unions. Although some
skills can be taught by one practitioner to another, others, such as updating of
content, require college researchers and teachers.
More familiar to scientists is the major attempt to reform and revitalize
inservice education for science teachers that was undertaken by the federal
government during the 1960s and 1970s. Academic-year institutes and summer
institutes were sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Those
programs had the following characteristics:
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TRAINING AND SUPPORT OF TEACHERS
65
They emphasized knowledge of the subject (e.g., biology).
They introduced new curricular programs.
They reflected the nature of the scientific enterprise and what scientists
do.
· They involved formal course work and academic credits leading to a
master's degree in biology.
· They paid teachers stipends and travel expenses for attending.
The primary focus of the institutes was on updating teachers' knowledge of
science, and in this they were undoubtedly successful. They paid less attention,
however, to changing teaching methods (i.e., to content-specific pedagogy).
A 1977 survey indicated that nearly 80% of mathematics and science
supervisors and 47% of science teachers in grades 10-12 had attended NSF
inservice institutes. However, only about 5% of grade K-3 teachers had attended
such programs (OTA, 1988~. Although the General Accounting Office (GAO)
reported little effect of the institutes on student achievement scores (GAO,
1984), results of studies by the Congressional Research Service and the National
Association for Research in Science Teaching indicate that the institutes had
positive effects (OTA, 19881. Part of the confusion stems from the fact that
the examinations that test achievement in biology were not well matched to
the laboratory-based experiences offered by the institutes. Furthermore, it
became clear to this committee through meeting with several hundred biology
teachers that the NSF-sponsored summer institutes had a deeply positive effect
on teachers' morale and sense of belonging to the wider scientific community.
Critics of the institutes have dismissed that result as marginally important (GAO,
1984~. But, in a profession to which it is difficult to attract talented people and
in which it is a struggle to prevent burnout, inservice programs that help teachers
to "feel good" about what they are doing certainly must touch the classroom in
subtle, positive, and important ways. As we discussed in Chapter 4, average
achievement-test scores tell us little about the understanding of science that
students take from the classroom. In addition, they tell us nothing about how
students are inspired by enthusiastic teachers to continue study of the subject in
college.
The type of inservice programs available to biology and natural-science
teachers has changed drastically since the 1970s, when both summer and
academic-year workshops and programs were offered on many college cam-
puses. Today, college inservice programs are offered for short periods, are
"one-shot" efforts, and usually are not conceptually organized.
Not surprisingly, inservice activities in science are elected more frequently
by teachers in the upper grades. In a 1985-1986 survey, only 16% of grade
K-6 teachers, but 47% of teachers in grades 7-9 and 46% of teachers in grades
9-12, had taken a science course since 1983 (Weiss, 19874. (The percentage
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FULFILLING THE PROMISE
of teachers in grades 7-9 reflects an NSF program directive to enhance middle-
school science.) Similarly, when teachers are asked how much time they
spent on inservice education in science in the preceding year, half the grade
K-6 teachers, but fewer than one-third of grade 7-12 teachers respond none.
Discrepancies exist in the availability of inservice science education for teachers
at various grade levels. Furthermore, NSF awards (in contrast with formula
grants) are made to individual institutions on the basis of merit, so availability
varies considerably with geographical area.
When Weiss (1987) asked teachers to describe their preferences for schedul-
ing inservice activities, 60% responded that they would "very likely" attend if
a workshop were offered on a workday. However, only one in three would
be very likely to attend a summer or after-school meeting, and only one
in five secondary-school science and mathematics teachers and one in seven
elementary-school teachers would be very likely to attend Saturday or evening
inservice programs. Yet almost all the earlier NSF institutes were on Saturdays,
after school, or in the summer. Clearly, both the scheduling and substance of
teacher inservice programs have changed dramatically in the last 2 decades. A
lack of stimulating inservice activities for science teachers could be a major
contributing factor in that change; however, if teachers' attitudes about the pro-
fessional importance of keeping abreast of advances in science have changed,
the problem is even deeper.
Reform Movements and Inservice Programs
After a period of severe budgetary cutbacks and elimination of programs
in education, the NSF Directorate for Science and Engineering Education once
again has funds in its teacher-enhancement and network programs, but there
is no apparent cohesive strategy for improving the science teaching force.
Although a plan for dissemination must be part of every proposal submitted
to NSF, principal investigators have autonomy to develop individual projects
and programs. NSF has not targeted for broad study and impact any specific
components of inservice education, such as courses in new biological topics,
improvement of students' quantitative abilities, development of mentor-teacher
skills, integration of mathematics and science, or teaching to all students.
In short, NSF has not developed a long-term agenda for reform. Disparate
programs, delivered in a variety of ways, are not likely to address the substantive
needs of practicing biology teachers nationally, nor to foster a professional
camaraderie, as did the NSF inservice programs during the 1960s and 1970s.
Some inservice programs have nevertheless been successful (see Appendix
E). But such programs for high-school teachers are too few and too limited in
scope to address the national problem. The most successful examples should
be examined to identify the elements that make them successful, and funds
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67
should be found to replicate these models so as to make outstanding inservice
opportunities much more widely available.
Both the Holmes- and Carnegie-sponsored initiatives propose changing
the nature of the teaching force; both advocate differentiated teaching staffs
with professional or lead or mentor teachers (all terms are used) having more
responsibilities and receiving more remuneration. For example, a Carnegie
report (1986) recommends introducing "lead teachers" who can help to re-
design schools and assist their peers in upholding high standards. Furthermore,
certification by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards rests
on the identification and cooperation of existing teachers to serve as mentors.
The members of the Holmes Group advocate that teachers in their professional
development schools have high status and participate continually in giving and
. . · . .
receiving ~nserv~ce ec ucat~on.
None of those recommendations, however, focuses on the specific nature of
inservice education that will change how science is taught in the nation's schools.
Indeed, the Holmes Group assumes that teachers who have better preservice
preparation will automatically continue in their field, whereas the National
Board for Professional Teaching Standards addresses inservice education only
as part of a 3-year induction process. Neither the members of the formal
reform movement nor the informal task forces, consortia, or commissions have
addressed the critical needs in inservice education for the approximately 37,000
biology teachers now in the profession, and all plans for reform require changes
in preservice preparation that are far from being in place.
The Concept of Mentors
The use of mentors is not a working concept in today's schools. In
other professions, a mentor is a trusted counselor who provides support and
guidance to junior professionals. In our nation's schools, however, there are
few documented examples of young teachers' benefiting from the knowledge
and experience of master teachers. We consider interactions with experienced
faculty an important part of the induction process, but young teachers are now
expected to go out on their own after graduating from college, and only rarely
are master teachers used to train them. When such interactions do occur, they
usually take the form of reporting on skills or techniques learned during a
workshop offered at a conference or summer inservice activity. Although those
activities are desirable, a much greater potential exists for experienced teachers
to contribute to the continuing inservice education of less-experienced teachers.
We also consider mentoring to be an important part of the professional
development of master teachers. By assisting in the training of young teachers,
older teachers can share valuable skills acquired through years of classroom
experience with the next generation of teachers. Exemplary teachers should
also be encouraged to devise new pedagogical techniques.
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The Role of Mentors
Mentor teachers should play an important part in the continuing education
of both novice and experienced teachers. They should give special attention to
teachers during the critical first few years. In particular, mentor teachers would:
· Help novice science teachers to make the best use of class time,
curricular materials, laboratory time, and resources.
· Help novice science teachers with practical guidance on instructional
techniques.
· Support beginning teachers by providing ideas for science activities
and information about local informal science resources.
Notify beginning teachers of pertinent and quality inservice activities.
Supervise novice teachers in both classroom and laboratory settings.
Provide advice about school and district policies.
Substitute for novice teachers, so that they can visit classrooms of more
experienced teachers.
· Help experienced teachers change their teaching methods, enhance their
laboratory programs, and improve their program of assessment.
Encourage other science teachers to observe their teaching.
Identification of Mentors
There are few examples of mentor-teacher programs. Most teachers who
serve as advisors of younger teachers are self-selected, because few, if any,
institutional benefits are related to mentoring in its present context. Mentoring
will not become a working concept without some drastic changes in how master
teachers are used within schools. Several options are available to identify
mentor teachers, but they are untested.
A mechanism must be developed, perhaps in the form of professional
certification, to identify mentor teachers. The National Science Teachers Asso-
ciation (NSTA) certifies teachers who submit proof of having achieved NSTA
standards for science teaching. Relatively few teachers, however, have chosen
to become certified this way.
The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards potentially offers
another type of certification for mentors. Connecticut's Beginning Educator
Support and Training (BEST) Program (1988a, 1988b, 1988c) is another exam-
ple of a new program that highlights the continuum of professional development
from novice to mentor teacher; more efforts in this direction are encouraged.
Benefits to the Mentors
The goals of mentor teachers will be to provide advice and guidance to
novice teachers and to help to institute curricular reform. Through participation
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in a mentoring program, experienced teachers would benefit by gaining the
opportunity to teach other teachers at a higher level. The break in routine would
be a rejuvenating experience for committed teachers who might otherwise suffer
from "burnout."
To attract the best teachers into mentoring programs, incentives must be
built into the system:
.
Released time for mentor teachers to work with younger teachers should
be funded.
· Mentor teachers should be scheduled to teach fewer classes per day
and should use this released time to supervise new teachers.
· Sabbatical time should be given to teachers to work with university
researchers to improve their laboratory skills and content knowledge or to work
with science educators on new curriculum projects and inservice activities. They
would take their knowledge and skills back to their home schools and conduct
inservice activities for other teachers.
Conclusions
When biology teachers have inservice opportunities in the discipline, it is
usually under the auspices of a local university that has received an NSF grant
or occasionally a Department of Education Title II award for teacher enhance-
ment. Those programs run the gamut 2-day workshops, summer research
experiences in industry or at a university, long-term involvement in curricular
development, and so forth. Because of restrictions imposed by universities or
NSF, few of the programs offer academic credit to the participating teachers,
and support for travel and stipends has been reintroduced only recently. Few are
incorporated into a conceptual approach that leads either to an advanced degree
or to a deep understanding of the discipline. National leadership is clearly
needed in identifying and defining the kinds of inservice programs that will be
most successful in fostering inquiry-based learning by students, in integrating
biological information and content pedagogy effectively for teachers, and in
generating mechanisms by which pedagogical skills can be propagated through
the teaching profession. Reinforcement of the profession with mentor teachers
who can contribute to the professional development of younger colleagues is
also needed.
Recommendations
· Science has a continuously changing frontier, and society is charac-
terized by change generated in part by science and technology. Moreover,
science teaching is a profession, and a notable difference between pro-
fessions and other occupations is that professionals are responsible for
their own continuing education. As part of their professional development,
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teachers must engage in inservice activities that advance their scientific
knowledge.
· New effective inservice programs should be created. They should
be:
- Attractive enough to induce many teachers to participate and ap-
propriate to teachers' needs, as identified by teachers.
- Conceptually organized, eventually operate in conjunction with pre-
service programs, and run on a continuing basis.
-Able to compensate teachers for their time.
Associated with opportunities for teachers to obtain small grants
that enable them to bring new approaches to the classroom.
Constantly evaluated for effectiveness.
Scheduled with sufficient flexibility to ensure attendance.
Designed to combine understanding of what to teach with under-
standing of how to teach.
Designed and conducted with the collaboration of experienced sci-
ence teachers, educators, and research scientists.
Coupled to mechanisms for disseminating new information through-
out the school district.
· The assumption that summer institutes like those sponsored by NSF
a generation ago, which gave mathematics and science teachers more up-to-
date knowledge of their subjects, will necessarily lead to better teaching is
naive. (As described in Chapter 8, the loss of interest in Biological Sciences
Curriculum Study materials provides a lesson about the design of inservice
programs.) In addition to teaching content, new inservice programs should
be meticulous in developing an array of effective pedagogical techniques
that engage students in learning scientific concepts instead of scientific
jargon. Different models need to be tried and evaluated in novel ways. The
effects on student performance should be recorded and the results reviewed
by instructors and participants and fed back into program development.
· The changing climate in which teachers operate suggests that some
experimentation will be necessary to schedule inservice programs that will
attract teachers, but also will be interesting, demanding, and rigorous
enough to change how teachers operate in the classroom. Moreover, pre-
college science faculty should have flexibility to choose inservice programs
according to the needs of individual schools and teachers and not have
inservice options thrust on them by administrators who are not engaged in
teaching.
· Change for teachers will be gradual and will depend on their
own perceptions, as well as student, parent, and community perceptions
of improved results. Teachers therefore need support after the inservice
work (Guskey, 1986~. They must be given time to assimilate the knowledge
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and suggestions proposed during inservice programs, to consider how the
changes will affect teaching and learning in their classrooms, and to consult
with colleagues. Attention should therefore be given to the need for long-
term collaborative arrangements for inservice support. Such inservice
activities should focus on collaborations among industry, the university
research community, and schools. They should involve federal and private
sponsorship, rather than be expressly commercial. And they should be
guided by the proper educational criteria, as described above.
· What has been said about inservice programs for high-school teach-
ers generally holds for elementary-school and middle-school teachers. The
available models are fewer, and the backgrounds, motivations, and interests
of the teachers are different, even though the challenge is no less impor-
tant. Because the nature of the task is different from that posed in the
case of high-school teachers, we recommend the development of distinct
cooperative inservice programs for elementary-school and middle-school
teachers.
· Some partnerships between school districts on one side and univer-
sities, foundations, and local industries on the other are trying to enhance
classroom performance. As suggested by the preceding two recommenda-
tions, more need to be tried. Owing to local autonomy, the difficulty with
this approach in isolation is that it will tell us little about what works or
why. We need improved mechanisms for assessing the success of the various
experiments in inservice education that are under way. The assessments
must be more sophisticated than the traditional recourse to average scores
on regional or national examinations. Pedagogical skills can be identified,
taught, and assessed (Kahle, 1985, 1987~. We also need improved methods
for distributing information developed in successful inservice programs,
and we need to attract the participation of additional teachers. These are
not matters that can be accomplished in a single effort; continuous evalu-
ation involving longitudinal and case studies will be required. In Chapter
8, we suggest how the research community might collaborate with teachers
and others to accomplish these goals.
· New inservice programs should address the need to develop a larger
cadre of mentor teachers. Graduates of such activities should be prepared
to provide assistance to other teachers in their schools and districts. Fel-
lowship support, perhaps even in the form of sabbaticals, should be made
available to the best teachers, so that they can go to universities, improve
their skills and subject knowledge, engage in science or education research,
participate in curriculum development, and prepare themselves to assist
less-experienced colleagues when they return to their home schools. Every
effort must be made to keep such teachers in the classroom, including
salary structures that reward, rather than penalize, talented teachers for
remaining teachers.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
biology teachers
